Gentle Giant. . Whatever happened (merged several similar threads)

He had Keithmoonitis.

 

BJ Wilson had it too!

 

The Vertigo albums are the best place to go next, IMO. Same, Acquiring the Taste, Octopus, Three Friends. There's also an upcoming comp called Three Piece Suite on Alucard.

 

For me, they had a great run of albums: Three Friends, Octopus, In a Glass House, The Power and the Glory and Free Hand. The first two albums and Interview are very good too, but those five albums are very consistent and excellent.

 

I've got my Gentle Giant ipod comp split into "eras".

GG, Acquiring The Taste, Three Friends, Octopus. These are the proggiest, most intricate, a bit pastoral, with Three Friends the one I'd recommend as most accessible for newbies.

In A Glass House, The Power And The Glory, Free Hand. More of a rockier sound emerging, with even some, OK I'm gonna say it, foot-tapping beats.

And then there's a third "era", from Interview onwards, which I have no desire to ever hear again.

 

Warning: Long post.

I haven't yet read through the other posts, but I'm going to say this: you will not likely receive a consensus on their best album, and that's because so many of them were so exceptional. Ultimately, I think people eventually come to decide which are their personal favorites, but broadly speaking, most of their albums are of the highest musical quality.

Bearing that in mind, since you state you're interested in the albums which are adventurous and musically enoyable, I'm going to go ahead and say that you should probably investigate everything from Acquiring the Taste straight through to Interview. (And of course, you already know Free Hand, which fits in with them quite snugly.)

You'll probably come to like some more than others, but you really should hear them all, because every single one of them is WORTHY of being somebody's favorite.

Further, then, I'll say that the debut is not quite developed. You can hear them trying to settle into creative waters, but they hadn't yet refined what they were trying to do. It's a good album but maybe not one to check out until you've been through some of the others.

Then there are their three post-classic albums. The Missing Piece is often called a half-great album (side 2 still displays progressive tendencies, though they're rapidly waning), though I enjoy the straighter songs on Side 1 as well. Giant for a Day is usually regarded as their ultimate stinker, and it's indeed their most self-consciously commercial album. Civilian is similarly commercial but maybe a little harder-edged and more confident sounding. I think both Civilian and Giant for a Day have some really good music on them, but then I'm a GG fanboy, which means you can probably ignore what I just said! Seriously, check these last three out if you love all the rest and decide you simply need more.

 

Thanks. That's the best answer yet. I'll go for it. Thanks to everyone for their input. Man, I love having new music to explore!

 

EM61 – Derek Shulman of Gentle Giant Interview with Derek!

"Derek Shulman of Gentle Giant joins Eric in conversation to discuss his early days discovering music, working as Simon Dupree and The Big Sound, his early friendship and the Gentle Giant audition of Elton John, the formation and creative process of Gentle Giant, working with Tony Visconti, the ups and downs of Gentle Giant, his time working A&R at Polygram and as the President/CEO of Atco Records where he helped discover and sign such bands as Bon Jovi, Cinderella, Tears for Fears, Dream Theater, Pantera, thoughts on Dan Reed Network, the new Gentle Giant Blu-Ray and CD release Three Piece Suite featuring remixes by Steven Wilson, does he still write music, does he miss performing, what’s next and much more."

 

That you for this recommendation. I'm on the second show (NY 1975) and it's amazing to see how these songs were constructed. I can't imagine how expensive it must have been for them to travel. They weren't exactly raking in the bucks. They must have been paying to perform. It's also amazing thinking about how few lineup alterations they had. Love for the music.

 

I think Acquiring The Taste is their best.

 

You might want to try "Edge of Twilight", which is a "Best of" issue. It covers their first four albums, plus their sixth pretty well.

 

Alright, who can name these folks?

 

1. Kerry and somebody.

2. Gary, somebody and somebody (with some somebodies in the background).

3. Malcolm and nobody.

 

Thats Mike Keneally standing next to Gary.

 

....very well, actually. It's got virtually every track from those 5 albums squeezed onto 2 cd's. Their albums tended to be only just over 30 mins each so that was possible.

Good sound and good liner notes. Compiled by the guy who ran a tribute website for a long time. This was my first GG purchase on cd and I'll second your recommendation!

 

Ah, OK. I know his name but didn't know what he looked like.

So then, 2 is Gary, Mike Keneally and somebody (with some somebodies in the background).

 

The somebody in the first photo is the Giant from their s/t album

 

Photos are from the recent fan gathering in Albuquerque NM that takes place in a different city and continent every year. The person in the first photo with Kerry is Andy West, bassist supreme from the Dixie Dregs. The people in the second photo behind Gary and Mike are attendees and not identifiable by me and that is indeed Malcolm Mortimer in the last picture. They played together on the jam night at the convention though I'm sure if Kerry joined in or not.

 

About a 45 minute interview taken at the recent Gorgg event in Albuquerque. Mike and Gary do most of the talking. Both Kerry and Malcolm are pretty soft spoken. I wish Kerry had participated more but he seems very humble and a bit reticent though he is clearly enjoying the proceedings. Will we ever see new music from the GG alumni? I regretfully have my doubts. Mike does offer to produce them though!

 

Anyone ever heard the supposed Schoencheeseberger tapes? Apparently lost in a fire, but maybe there are boots...?

"Gentle Giant reminiscing about their favorite hit by the band Chicago, "Old Days", and playing variations on that song transposed for 12 tone serialism: The well-known Schoencheeseberger Days tapes that Gentle Giant recorded in the late '70s. It turns out that those tapes may have been destroyed in a fire, and what's here is all that remains from the same era."​

 

From Mike Keneally's latest newsletter detailing recent events -

I was just in Chicago at Progtoberfest III at Reggie's, playing with BFD trio-style. I really loved playing this show - thank you Joe T. and Bryan B. (and Gentle Giant's Gary Green sitting in on drums for a jam!). The festival as a whole was great, studded with many pals and wonderful bands (it was really great to see, among others, The Tangent/Karmakanic, Thank You Scientist, a one-time-only Necromonkey improv collective, the band Abacab playing all of Seconds Out, Nili Brosh playing with Alphonso Johnson and Chester Thompson, and the Chicago Zappa Collective playing "Billy The Mountain" – holy cow I loved that). I had a great time sitting in with Frogg Café and The Don & Bunk Show (it was an honor to play for the first time with Don Preston and Bunk Gardner, and a pleasure to see and play with my buds Nick D'Virgilio and Ike Willis). And sharing a brief moment backstage with Gary Green and Martin Barre, reuniting more than four decades after their bands Gentle Giant and Jethro Tull last toured together, was a pretty indelible moment.

Hey, regarding Gentle Giant: a few weeks ago I attended my first ever GORGG. That stands for Global On-Reflection Giant Gathering and it's an annual meeting place for Gentle Giant fans the world over (and some Giant members also – Gary Green, Kerry Minnear and Malcolm Mortimore were in attendance this year), and it toggles back and forth between the US and Europe on alternate years, hosted each year by a different GORGGer. This year it was in Albuquerque, and the host Benjamin Harrison was kind enough to hire me to do a performance, primarily solo but I was delighted to be joined by Andy West for a good-sized handful of tunes, and by Anthony Garone who lent his acoustic guitar artistry to "Click" and Giant's "Aspirations." (My brother Marty and I recorded a version of "Aspirations" when I was 14 years old – can I convey to you how surreal it was to be playing it forty-ish years later for Gary, Kerry and Malcolm? No I can't.) (Speaking of surreal – the night after my gig there was an all-night jam wherein Gary and Malcolm played dual drums on "Pride Is A Sin," Kerry insisted I play keys instead of him on a version of GG's "Mobile," and I witnessed the Green/Mortimore drum duo with Kerry Minnear on bass powering a ZZ Top medley. THIS ACTUALLY HAPPENED.)



There are a couple of videos online which provide glimpses into some different aspects of what went down there…first is an interview that Anthony Garone of Make Weird Music conducted with Gary, Kerry, Malcolm and myself. [already posted above] What a singular honor to be interviewed along with these true heroes of mine. Anthony has posted a transcript, a video and an audio podcast of the interview so that you may consume it in any way that serves your needs. Thank you Anthony!

Also during GORGG, I performed an acoustic guitar duet with Alan Benjamin that originally was recorded by Alan's band Advent. My part was originally devised and performed by Greg Katona, whom I want to thank for coming up with such a challenging and beautiful part. I really enjoyed the process of learning and performing this lovely piece – thank you for inviting me to do so, Alan!

 

I saw GG at the Royal Hawaiian Supper Club in Falls Church, Virginia, of all places, during what must have been the Missing Piece tour. Brit punks Dr. Feelgood opened, a very strange match for Giant. (I know others wouldn't call them punks but it was 1977 or so and they were indeed punks.) I think Giant opened with "Bet You Thought We Couldn't Do It," which struck me as their answer to the punk explosion.

Giant was utterly spectacular, a hard-rocking, high-energy, high-precision outfit. It's hard to explain what seeing them was like, especially at the Royal Hawaiian Supper Club, a huge restaurant floor festooned with tiki decor. But if you use your visual imagination while listening to Playing The Fool you can get a sense of it - band members switching off instruments, then everyone coming up with recorders, and then everyone suddenly playing drums. It was a fantastic show.

As for the albums, I don't have favorites. I haven't heard the debut, Giant For a Day or Civilian, and I don't know Interview well. But of the others, one doesn't stand out to me as clearly superior. Maybe they're just so thorny they're hard to get to know. In a Glass House, Octopus, Three Friends, Acquiring the Taste, The Power and the Glory, Free Hand, and Playing the Fool are all great.

 

Latest issue of Prog #83.

Prog stars discuss their love of Gentle Giant

 

Dr. Feelgood were more the disciples of Johnny Kidd and The Pirates who sailed the UK charts between 1959 and 1964 - recording numbers such as 'Shakin All Over', 'Please Don't Touch', (both written by Johnny Kidd, who died in a car smash in 1966), A Shot of Rhythm and Blues', I'll Never Get Over You', 'Hungry For Love' , 'I Can Tell' - the latter being covered by the Feelgoods who took their name from Johnny Kidd's 1964 single of that name rather than the figure himself

- original Feelgood's guitarist Wilko Johnson being an admirer of Pirate Mick Green's guitar style - together they wrote 'Goin' Back Home' which was recorded by both Dr. Feelgood and the reformed classic Pirates line up of Mick Green (Lead guitar), Johnny Spence (vocals, Bass guitar ) & Frank Farley (Drums)

so Dr. Feelgood were actually a fifties / early sixties Rock & Roll / R & B influenced gritty 'pub band' style seventies outfit rather than seventies punk band

 

At the Palladium in NYC, Dr Feelgood were basically bullied off the stage by a rather rowdy NY crowd, the only time I ever got to see one of my Fav Bands, Missing Piece tour is correct.